Everything was just peachy when I first got into Guitar Hero on the PlayStation 2. Two games came and went and I even got Guitar Hero 2 again for the Xbox 360 just to have the new guitar peripheral and some none-horrible graphics. By the time I'd played through Guitar Hero III I was getting over my enthusiasm for the series. Then Rock Band hit and everything changed again. The band mechanism, drums, microphone and so on really gave my interest levels a shot in the arm.
Guitar Hero Metallica: Milking plastic guitar gameplay one stadium at a time?
At the work's holiday party, all of the staff partied hard, played Rock Band to death, and went home to recover from terrible hangovers. That was December 2007 and since then I've been growing more and more bitter about where subsequent games have been going, which is to say nowhere. Since my party blowout Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Guitar Hero World Tour, Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero Metallica have been released as new products. This year alone we'll see Rock Band: The Beatles, Guitar Hero 5, Band Hero and DJ Hero joining the crowd.
When is it going to end? I know this style of game keeps on selling but from a personal perspective I'm all done. Until I can plug in my iPod and play the music that I really care about (which is way less than half of songs currently available in these games) I just don't want to keep spending money on new iterations. I certainly don't want to keep shelling out on new hardware every six months: The stuff I already own should last the distance and not break. Speaking of which, I think I've been through at least four guitar controllers so far.
Activision Blizzard and Harmonix know how to make money and therefore these new games won't stop coming. But for now my plastic axes are relegated to the broom closet under the stairs until something really big happens to make me want to go back and try again.
